I am Chris Spencer

“When I retired from football in 2014, I knew I wanted to do something to help people, specifically athletes.”

A couple weeks ago, when my kids started planning a family trip to the 2024 Pro Bowl in Orlando, my 14-year-old turned to me and asked if I’d ever made a Pro Bowl.

Spoiler: I hadn’t.

I should have, and I know it. I was a lean 6-foot-3, 315 pounds. I ran a 4.9 at the Combine. I squatted 700 pounds in high school, and upped it to 800 in college at Ole Miss. I benched 500-plus.

I was a first round draft pick, played 10 years in the NFL, started on three different teams. I spent every week in sold out stadiums, called some of the best to ever do it my teammates, and had a career thousands of athletes only dream of. A lot of guys flame out early. They make it to the league and don’t have staying power. I did.

But I never made it to where I wanted to be because I never made a Pro Bowl. That fact still haunts me. Man, gets under my skin. And now I had to explain to my teenage son why. I was not looking forward to this.

I can tell you what goes into being good enough to be a Pro Bowler. I had the talent and I sure as hell had the work ethic. No one would ever question that. I had the foundational pieces to become great, to be considered one of the best centers to ever play this game.

But what I understand now, at 41, is that I wanted to be great but I didn’t have a plan to get there. Or at least, not a complete plan. I had mastered the technical, tactical and physical parts of the game. What I hadn’t mastered was the mental side of it.

There are guys who played in the Pro Bowl who didn’t come close to having the physical attributes and skill set that I did. But they had something else over me: the mental piece. It drives me crazy to this day.

What I also know now, after nine years of retirement, is that I was far from alone: A lot of athletes haven’t mastered the mental side of the game. It’s not because we’re doing anything wrong though — it’s because we don’t have the right tools.

I’m determined to fix that.

I had what most people would call an incredibly successful professional career. But I know I could have achieved more, should have achieved more. Why I didn’t reach those highs is something I question every single day. It still irks me.

But being angry about it isn’t going to help anything — and it’s definitely not going to help the next generation. What I’ve learned, after talking to sport psychologists and scientists and data collection experts, is that I actually have the answers and the tools.

We all do. We already have everything we need to be successful — but we have to understand how these tools work. And to do that, we have to get to know ourselves first.

Now, before you go thinking that this sounds all woo-woo or I’m involved in some crazy MLM scheme or something, hear me out.

When I retired from football in 2014, I knew I wanted to do something to help people, specifically athletes. Part of my motivation was because as an athlete, I knew a lot of people wrote me off, and thought my only contribution to the world could come on the football field. I was, and am, driven to prove them wrong.

But more than that, I know what it’s like to not reach your potential and have it nag at you. I want to help others avoid this feeling.

I think a lot about, what did I need as an athlete? What would have helped me?

That’s why I created this company, Mental Metrix.

In the NFL, the difference between first place and tenth place is the slimmest of margins. The difference in first rounders from second rounders is 0.1 seconds, maybe even .01 seconds. When we’re talking about on-field ability, the separators are minuscule. You know your 40 time, you know your technique — but do you know your mental metrics? If you’re a coach, do you know your athletes’ mental metrics? Because that’s the separator. Do you understand your athletes and your staff and what motivates them? Do you understand that about yourself?

Because you need to. When you understand your players, when you really know them, that’s the key to success. That unlocks everything. And at Mental Metrix, we have a winning formula to help you do that.

Backed by science and with the help of sport psychologists, we deliver over 60 personality, behavior, and communication data points that can help athletic departments and sports organizations get the information they need to build healthier and higher-performing teams.

We give you the tools, help you decipher the language and, most importantly, make sure athletes understand that there’s no “right” or “wrong” personality type. It’s about learning how to communicate with every personality type, which helps you advocate for every personality type.

It’s about building a plan with those foundational pieces that can get you to the top. It’s about giving you what you need to get to your own Pro Bowl.

And I can’t wait to tell you more about it.